Intraoral scanners have been developed for direct optical measurement of teeth and the subsequent automatic manufacture of dental appliances such as aligners, bridges, crowns, and so on. The term “direct optical measurement” signifies surveying of teeth in the oral cavity of a patient. Intraoral scanners typically include an optical probe coupled to an optical scanning system, which may include optics as well as an optical pick-up or receiver such as charge coupled device (CCD) or complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) sensor. The optical scanning systems of intraoral scanners are generally able to generate three dimensional images with accurate shape. However, the optical scanning systems of intraoral scanners generally have inaccurate color sensing capabilities.
Due to the inability of intraoral scanners to accurately generate color data for a patient's teeth, tooth coloring for dental prosthetics such as crowns and bridges are primarily performed manually by eye. However, the current practice of manually coloring dental prosthetics by eye is time consuming and inefficient.